HUMOUR AND HEROES

There were a couple of articles in your February issue that I found especially interesting.

The first was the Royal Armouries column on the Velodog, by Mark Murray-flutter.

I had a Velo-dog come into my possession under odd circumstances. I was working at Bermans, the film and theatrical costumiers, and the head of the military department came into my office with a Velo-dog that he had found in the pocket of a uniform, which had just been returned from a film. He gave it to me as I was deemed to know about guns. Well, I took it home, fiddled with it and found that the .25 cartridge from a Baby Browning fitted exactly. I never did try to fire it and when my Firearms Officer visited at the time of my FAC renewal I gave it to him and he undertook to dispose of it.

The other article was a review of the book Hero of Kumaon. I had two heroes as a teenager: Jim Corbett and Harry Selby. This book on Corbett filled in a lot of gaps about him, which were always lacking in his own books about the hunting of the man-eaters in Kumaon. I was always amazed by Corbett’s ability to read the movement of the predators in the forest by the calling of the birds, monkeys and deer. What a bushman, and the book is well worth a read.

My chance to move to Africa came a bit later in life. I was shooting in the 1981 World Practical Pistol Championships and had the opportunity for a bush trip, which reawakened all the old thoughts of Africa. Three years later, a pistol-shooting trip to Zimbabwe introduced me to a couple of farmers with hunting ranches – I was hooked. Every year for the next 16 years I returned to enjoy the bush and occasionally to hunt.

Soon after that I ended up living in South Africa.

During those years I managed to hunt most plains game species, usually for the pot, and one buffalo, which was also eaten. Wonderful times.

Lindsay Jamieson

Sherborne, Dorset